A government in full flight from the facts

Does anyone in the Conservative party know what research is supposed to be for?

With the latest cuts to the Department of Justice’s research budget, it seems Conservatives are hoping that so long as they go through the motions, no one will notice that government research is no longer doing what it’s supposed to do.

The purpose of research in government is pretty obvious. It’s to test assumptions, so legislators can make policy that works and change policy that doesn’t. Without decent monitoring and evaluation, there’s no way for legislators to know if any of their policies are doing what they’re supposed to do.

Unfortunately, it looks as though the government has decided to punish Department of Justice researchers for being a little too good at figuring out which policies aren’t working. The government is cutting 20 per cent from the department’s research budget, and firing eight experienced legal researchers in the process — apparently because some of their work has “at times left the impression that research is undermining government decisions.”

That single sentence, part of an internal report to the department’s deputy minister, says a lot about the Conservative perspective on new information. Rather than seeing research as providing valuable insights that could help the government make better policy, the Conservatives see facts as a threat.

That’s a dangerous position for a democratic government to hold. It suggests a leadership that would rather shut down oversight than confront the possibility that it might not be infallible.

Democracies are deliberately constructed so that no single group is able to consolidate too much power. Elections aren’t winner-takes-all affairs; Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition has seats in the Commons so it can monitor the decisions of the majority and hold it to account in open debate.

The Conservatives demand nothing less than complete, unquestioning support for their legislative agenda — even from the people employed to make sure the government has its facts straight.

Of course, the Conservatives have taken steps to make it awfully difficult for the opposition to fulfill those duties. Back in 2012, it looked like the Conservatives were going to set records for the number of times they used parliamentary procedure to limit debate on controversial bills in Parliament. In just the past year, Conservatives have stifled debate on pension reform, the Fair Elections Act, and an omnibus budget bill. The constant use of omnibus bills is a particularly odious way of quashing discussion — how can hundreds of pages of legislation be fully critiqued in a few days of debate?

The courts are also in a position to hold the government to account, and there’s no doubt they’ve done their best. When Conservatives made victim fine surcharges mandatory, judges rebelled against being forced to issue fines of up to $200 against impoverished offenders. In some cases, they flatly refused to order the surcharges; in others, they gave offenders up to 99 years to pay up.

At higher levels, the Supreme Court has handed the Conservatives a string of high-profile defeats on everything from safe injection sites to the rules on appointing Quebec justices to the Supreme Court bench. In response, Harper lashed out at Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin with weird abandon, indulging in a public tantrum which impugned the integrity of one of the most respected public figures in Canada.

Trying to prevent both the opposition and the courts from doing their jobs isn’t enough. The Conservatives demand nothing less than complete, unquestioning support for their legislative agenda — even from the people employed to make sure the government has its facts straight.

Just ask the scientists at the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), which was saved from closure only after a UN-funded non-profit stepped in to help keep it open. Or ask the 20 per cent of Library and Archives Canada staff who lost their jobs after funding cuts in 2012, jeopardizing our country’s most important documentary asset. Or talk to staff at any of the numerous businesses, non-profits and university departments which can’t get basic demographic data anymore because the long-form census was somehow inconsistent with Conservative ideology.

The Conservatives have been pursuing a war on information for years. When they first made it into government, they did so by promising transparency in the wake of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. Since then, the Conservatives have proceeded to gut the parts of our bureaucracy that provide the information to make transparency meaningful.

Each fresh round of layoffs and restructurings brings outrage, at least for a while. But despite the odd victory, like the ELA, government research is still dying the death of a thousand cuts. In the process, the public is losing one of the most important means of keeping government accountable: seeing whether the numbers match up to the promises.

Devon Black is studying law at the University of Victoria. In addition to writing for iPolitics, Devon has worked for the Canadian International Development Agency, Leadership Africa USA and RamRais & Partners.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

After a life spent building people focused, ethical and evidence based government programs from what was once policy by pork barrel, I am devastated and sickened by what is happening to our country by it s “rulers”. I hope that you Devon will have part in building bigger and better if we ever recover a responsible government. I d feel better about that happening if any opposition party would speak for what has been lost and its plans to build bigger and better should it be elected to lead and govern. In a working parliament again. People don t yet realize what we’ ve lost; as as time passes they think the once unthinkable state control is normal. We need people like you to light the way. Stay strong! they wont make it easy and it never was.

Scary stuff, every day is Fright Night in Canada with the Harper/Conservatives doing their best to drive us all into submission. Thank god we only have about 16 months to put up with this 1970″s South American Dictatorship of a Government. Soon Harper and his disciples will feel like their on a life raft on the Niagara River heading for the Falls.

Enlargement of the federal legislature is inconsistent with submission, as the power would be more decentralized as a result of less dependence on centralized messaging to be (re-)elected. Maurice Duplessis in his first term of office reduced the size of the legislative assembly of Quebec by 3.6%.

Former harper advisor and teacher Tom Flanagan calls the strategy incrementalism. “The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.”
― A Hïtler, Meïn Kämpf